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New Year, New View of The Strip

The Strip is getting nipped, tucked, and made over, with new retail venues up and down the boulevard, while plans are also in the works for a high-rise tower, a major art museum, and arenas galore.

Shake Shack is opening at New York–New York

In case you’ve already shopped everywhere on the Strip, a bonanza of new Strip-front retail developments is on the way. Tropicana is adding a two-level, 275,000-square-foot enclosed mall atop its 50,000-square-foot casino. The project is slated to break ground this spring, with completion expected in 2015. Not to be outdone, Treasure Island’s new three-story, 46,200-square-foot shopping center, across from Fashion Show mall, will sprawl over 19.5 acres. Retail plans are also shaping up at New York-New York as part of MGM Resorts’ $100 million Strip-front makeover, which will create a parklike shopping and restaurant promenade. The famed Brooklyn Bridge will serve as the entryway to an improved Nine Fine Irishmen restaurant that will spill onto Las Vegas Boulevard. But it’s the project’s two-story Hershey’s Chocolate World—complete with a 70-foot-tall replica of a milk chocolate bar—that’s getting the most attention. Chocoholics will be able to top off their sugar rush with frozen custard from a nearby Shake Shack, the chain’s first Western US outpost.

Strip shopping fatigue? There are more retail opportunities on the way in Summerlin, too. EHB Companies, the folks behind One Queensridge and Tivoli Village, is building a snappy new 18-acre shopping complex called Sahara Center, anchored by T.J. Maxx, Stein Mart, Sprouts Farmers Market, and HomeGoods. Plus, six buildings will house stand-alone restaurants and pubs.

The Marriott’s Grand Chateau will become even grander this summer

Soon towering over the Strip… The construction of a third tower at the Marriott’s Grand Chateau marks the time-share resort’s third phase since opening in 2005. The 37-story tower—adding 233 villas, for a total of 643 units—is scheduled to open this summer. A second pool with a pair of whirlpool spas will be added to the fifth floor, as well as a lobby lounge, a billiards room, and a guest marketplace. “The building represents the first ground-up vertical construction on the Las Vegas Strip since 2008,” notes Travis Burton, regional vice president of Tutor Perini Building Corporation, the contractor and the firm behind CityCenter.

A museum of modern art planned for Downtown Las Vegas could be a cultural game changer for the city, bereft of such an institution since the short-lived Guggenheim Hermitage Las Vegas, inside Venetian, closed in 2008 and the Las Vegas Art Museum shuttered in 2009. The Vegas-based Assemblage Studio is the architect for the $29 million visual arts complex (assemblagestudio.com), which will have two rectangular steel-and-glass-sheathed spaces stacked atop one another in the heart of the city’s 18b Arts District. The project’s developers, a nonprofit group of community leaders, hope to break ground before the end of the year.

The first rendering of AEG and MGM’s muchanticipated arena

AEG and MGM Resorts recently let loose details of a $350 million as-yet-unnamed indoor events arena planned for the Strip between the New York-New York and Monte Carlo resorts. The 20,000-seat venue will anchor a $100 million open-air entertainment promenade linking the properties between Las Vegas Boulevard and Frank Sinatra Drive. The project architect, Populous, the firm responsible for Coors Field in Denver, has produced a stunning design, with an expansive glass and LED video overlay, sweeping balconies, an outdoor performance stage, and a 145-foot-tall elliptical façade. “The design ensures we will create a truly striking entertainment venue representing the color, drama, and excitement of the city,” says lead arena designer Brad Clark. The structure will include practical amenities, too, like a perforated aluminum screen to provide outdoor shade and wind protection. Construction is set to begin next summer and end in spring 2016. Meanwhile, UNLV alum and former NBA player Jackie Robinson is proposing a $1.3 billion, privately funded 22,000-seat arena between the under-construction SLS hotel and the defunct Fontainebleau, tentatively called the All Net Arena and Resort. It would be the second largest NBA venue. A new football arena at UNLV is also being pondered, as part of the campus’s revitalization.